Back home after an amazing few days on the Monterey Peninsula. Concorso Italiano, Rolex Monterey Sports Car Reunion, RM Auctions, Pebble Beach and more. Gooding & Company sold the first Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa for a little over $16,000,000 (including buyers premium) to set an all time record for a car sold at auction. It beat the previous record of $14,000,000 set a few years ago for a different 250 Testa Rossa.

At Laguna Seca on Saturday they had a running of the Ferrari 250 GTO (cheap ones are worth $15,000,000 and the "good ones" are worth upwards of $30,000,000 or more) and these guys drove them hard; sliding through corners was the order of the day. Sunday morning they were lined up on the grass at Pebble Beach.

For me though, the most incredible couple of moments were when the very same Mercedes 300 SLR that Stirling Moss drove to victory in the 1955 Mille Miglia was driven onto the lawn. There's a little patch of blacktop that they roll over and the guy driving it lit up the back tires as he crossed - not 10 feet away from me! And that moment was outdone a few hours later when Sir Stirling Moss himself drove that very same car up on the stage to accept the Mille Miglia Award, and then drove off within inches of me as I snapped a few pictures. As the car passed by the exhaust pipes sticking out from behind the front tires blew a violent puff of exhaust right in my face. Absolutely awesome!

I got to meet Sir Stirling Moss, Jay Leno, Alain de Cadenet (host of the Victory By Design DVD series), George Barris, Horatio Pagani and Dan Neal.

Oh, and I got to spend a couple of hours freshening up a 1959 Ferrari 250 GT Coupe prior to sale at RM on Saturday. It was owned by a Kuwaiti Sheik who shipped it over for the sale and the car's handler told me that I had "transformed the car" and that he was sending pictures back to his boss in Kuwait.

 

Sounds like you had fun there Mike. When I was about 16 me and a buddy were at the DC area Rod and Custom show, probably 1966-67. George Barris was there. My buddies divorced mom was also with us and she was a knockout. Well Barris starts hitting on her and me and Mark got to hang out for the entire evening with GB. Nice guy but a real skirt chaser. He also got to see me win 1st place in the model car contest for my Cobra. That's my George Barris story!

 

and now you have a real life Cobra, right? Funny how THAT happened. Coincidence? I think not!

 

I can see it now...Mike in Kuwait....personal car guru for the Sheik....

 

Wow, wish I could have been there! What an amazing time you had indeed! Memories for a life time. Can't wait to see some pictures.

 

I've sorted through the pix (I shot over 1700 images over the 4 days!) and have a bunch of them up on our forum at Pictures from Monterey Week, 2011

 

AMAZING pictures! Some of them actually took my breath away. I can't even imagine being around half a billion dollars worth of cars!!!

 

Mike,
Thanks for the great photos and comments. Your posts are always interesting and informative.